


Lost In This Moment

by Zetal (Rodinia)



Series: July Song Fic Challenge - @gabrielwritestonight [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Consensual Sleep Watching, Multi, Songfic, They Know He's There
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-07
Updated: 2016-07-07
Packaged: 2018-07-22 03:06:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7417168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rodinia/pseuds/Zetal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel watches Sam and Dean sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost In This Moment

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the July Songfic Challenge at @gabrielwritestonight on Tumbler.
> 
> Song: "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" by Aerosmith (or Mark Chesnutt, which is the version I'm more familiar with, though I listened to Aerosmith's while writing because it's the one I have in my music library)

Castiel loved watching the Winchesters sleep. It had taken Dean a while to get used to the idea of having someone watching him while he slept, especially sleeping with his arms around his brother. Sam was the one who’d convinced him, reminding him that the angel didn’t sleep, so if Dean wouldn’t let him hang around, he’d never get to spend the night with them. And Sam didn’t think that was particularly fair.

There were many things about being human that Castiel missed. The sensory input was so much better. With practice, he’d regained some of it; he’d learned to shut off the taste of molecules and found that the flavor was still there, just muted. Human music sounded weaker, more flawed. When he was human, he’d come to appreciate Dean’s “classic rock”, but now it was right back to being noise compared to the music of Heaven and nature.

Sleeping was not something he missed. At first, he’d tried to sleep like a Winchester, but soon realized that he needed more than that, and he resented the lost time and the time spent vulnerable to the angels who were searching for him. And then there were the dreams. Even the good ones terrified him. His brain was tricking him, forcing him to accept alternate realities and impossibilities. The nightmares were even worse. Castiel had never been particularly afraid of Hell, or of Lucifer except when he’d taken on Sam’s memories, or even the Leviathans. But dreaming of them as a human, he could understand why humans were so scared.

Watching Sam and Dean, though, Castiel thought there might be good things about it. In sleep, they were at peace. Sam’s worries and doubts were laid aside, and when he had a pleasant dream, he would smile. Not just a quick grin at something amusing, or a forced smile to let everyone pretend he was okay while they got on with something Sam felt was more important, but a real smile of actual happiness. He’d never seen Sam smile like that when he was sleeping alone and Castiel was, allegedly, watching NetFlix. But here, in Dean’s arms, Sam seemed to be truly happy in his sleep.

Dean, too, seemed happier in sleep. He could cast aside the guilt and the burdens he felt during the day, the weight of the world he carried on his shoulders because someone had to. In his sleep, he could return to the one directive that had guided his life pretty much his whole life: take care of Sammy. Dean had been called to so many purposes, asked to do so many things by so many people. And yet, despite how many times Dean had saved the world, how many individual people Dean had saved, he was always at his most content, his most sure of himself, when he was taking care of his little brother. Castiel had little to compare it to, as Dean usually woke up when he came in, but it was hard to imagine him any more peaceful than he was with Sam next to him.

Sam had worried once that with them sleeping peacefully for a change, in safety, watching them sleep would get boring. Castiel was pretty sure he’d gotten Sam to understand that angels didn’t get bored, not like humans did. It would have been a very dull millennia in the time leading up to the arrival of humans if they did, when things happened at the paces of hundreds of thousands of years. Compared to that, six hours was nothing.

What he wasn’t sure he’d made Sam understand was that he and Dean were hardly dull in their sleep. Castiel could hear their hearts beating, listen to their breathing. Considering how often he’d had to face the possibility of never hearing those again, those sounds were sweeter than any music he’d listened to human.

Dean started thrashing a little, and Castiel leaned down and pressed a kiss to his forehead. He considered it one of the greatest honors of his life that Dean, whose identity was so bound up in being a caretaker for others, would let down his guard and allow Castiel to take care of him. He would not fail in that duty by leaving Dean in a nightmare. He hadn’t seen much of this one, but it was enough to see the black over his eyes. It was Dean’s most frequent nightmare, that instead of Sam saving him, he had killed his brother and given himself over completely to the demon within.

Both brothers would occasionally talk in their sleep, as well. It usually made little sense. He wondered if Sam knew that he would sometimes speak in Latin in his sleep. Sam had always been the stronger of the brothers when it came to remembering and using Latin, but when Dean had become a demon, one of the things Sam turned his obsession to was becoming fluent enough to not need to memorize different incantations for different scenarios. He wanted to be ready to face whatever he had to to get his brother back. Even at his weakest, his stolen grace burning through him, helping Sam practice his Latin was something he could always do.

Sam was talking now, in English. Castiel listened, as he always did. Half-formed phrases, mostly about sunshine and darkness and, for some reason, cats. Whatever he was dreaming about, it was obviously a good dream.

Occasionally, he went into the dreams of one brother or the other, but not often. He no longer had dreams of his own, and he didn’t miss them. Nights like this were his dreams. Even when he’d had dreams, the best of them didn’t compare to the reality of watching over his Winchesters. He could gladly spend the rest of their lives doing this. If angels had heavens, Castiel thought this would be where he spent forever.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments always welcome and loved like kittens!


End file.
